A doc where you can create folders, and put anything in them (other folders or items) and open them , close them, go back, add new items/folders…
With an easy to use UI.
Something like this (unfinished doc):
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Hi Fran,
Why not use the page structure for that?
P
Maybe there’s not as much differences, I wouldn’t mid that either.
I just prefer the user interface aspect of having everything on a single page. The buttons and so on.
You have the complete folder/page structure down the left, which means you can jump to any node immediately, and close and open as needed.
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Yes, but I would like to add additional functionalities like connecting different pages with #tags for example, and make one page under multiple different folders.
I feel like that would be a mess with pages menu on the left. There would be duplicate pages… then if I change data in one, the other ones duplicates should update… Keep in mind this could end up being 1000+ pages doc.
As I said, it’s a simple and good solution but I’m looking for the best 
.
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Wow that’s inspiring. Whoever did that must be really good at using Coda as frontend builder. A lot of work behind that scene.
I can only guess:
- There’s one giant table and that’s the view that displaying data in Card mode.
- There are many Filters involved behind the scenes hidden in another page which deriving their values from many different Controls, and every Button set to modify the value of each Control.
- Each row containing data to be used for either ‘folder’ or ‘items’.
- There are multiple supporting columns that defines the parent/child relationship between the rows which values determined when the item created.
- Each ‘collection’ is another row in another ‘collection’ table which contains arrays of items when added.
- The top breadcrumb section is using format formula which pulls data from a column that displaying current parent-child relationships between the columns.
Very interesting and impressive programming.
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Is this your doc in the gif? Then it seems you’ve already got it 
I haven’t seen a better demo yet.
I was toying around the idea of a Point-of-Sale doc for my prefab food business. I wanted to have the receipt to the left and the nested structure of products (categories, subcategories, products etc — mixed and with arbitrary nesting) to the right.
We’d then put a tablet in the store and use this to register orders.
We ultimately scrapped this because we needed to have fiscal reporting, and programming a connector (e.g. a Pack) to do that was beyond insane — our IRS’s API is idiotic, to put it mildly. So we ended up using an experimental solution from our bank, a free software cash register addon to the card terminal we already had. It’s a rather poorly written Android app with a sad UI but it does the job and diligently sends everything to the IRS.
And then I’m getting the data on all sales from our bank’s backend into Coda through a hidden internal API.
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Yes, that’s my doc, and that’s a lot of praises 
. I was hoping to create a Learning Management System (LMS) where I can track topics I’m interested in and sources of information, but I put that on hold for now while I’m working on a Bookmarks Managing System.
Here is a link to the LMS doc if anyone finds it in any way useful, just be aware it’s messy and uncompleted.
And that’s the reason why I ask about other people’s templates; because I would like to learn different ways to create the hierarchy system which is also a main thing when it comes to the Bookmarks Management doc.
By hierarchy I mean: what items to show/hide when I open a folder and so on…
I am quite satisfied with my solution in the my LMS doc, but with bookmarks I went for a different system where hopefully when I’m don with it, each bookmark can be used in multiple different folders while also, and this is the current problem I’m trying to solve, remembering it’s position within the folder.
That way a bookmark can be in first place in one folder, and third place in another.
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It is indeed, I did manage to do it somehow, but I’m always looking for a better ways to do things.
That’s impressive. Sorry can’t be any of help. I;m no programmer and only started with Coda 1 month ago. 
Anyway if I may, I just wondering how you plan to publish that interactive page as front end page and hiding the backend, while maintaining them to be as interactive as they currently are, and not moving them to different docs and separate the data.
Because so far I can’t find a way to create front end page in Coda. Which led me to assume that there’s no way Coda can be used for building front end pages along, since there’s no security features whatsoever.
About BMS, I have no insight about it, but just notice that apparently raindrop.io is one of the most popular one. Maybe can analyze it for reference.
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I’m not a programmer myself either. I started using coda 2-3 months ago and how I learned the most is by watching the legend’s above (Paul Danyliuk) YouTube videos on best practices. It’s quite long 6 video series, 7 hours in total, and I just went along and did everything he did.
And I must admit, I didn’t fully understand what I was doing until I got to the end and then tried to figure out what was the purpose of each part of the doc and then things started makin more sense. But based on how you described what you think is going on behind my demo doc, you understand more than I did back then, so it should be easier for you to get value out of the series.
He also touches on securing data by basically making helper tables, filtering out rows so no one can see them and also locking the doc, but in LMS that would be of no use since it’s not meant to be used by multiple people. Even if you want to show the doc to someone, you can just share it with view only permission.
Using Cross-doc or Sync Tables pro packs could be useful at connecting front-end and back-end from different docs. I honestly don’t know, I never used them.
And there is this beautiful doc diving into encryption. Maybe that’s something you could use when it comes to safety.
I was about to use raindrop but when I saw that you need to pay in order to have a 2-level deep folder structure, then I decided to try doing it in coda. But yes, I can use it as a reference.
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You are too kind, Fran Thanks for the name-drop on “Encryption in Coda”.
I am obsessed with infinitely nested folders in Coda. I’ve got a couple of docs that implement that as a navigation solution. Let me try find one that’s streamlined so it’ll be easier to understand, then I’ll post a link for you here later today.
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I would really appreciate it if you could do that!
Thanks @Fran_Vidicek for the shoutout!
STP won’t really solve the frontend/backend separation unfortunately. But I built a few frontend/backend docs where the transport is
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Forms: 🍕 Viva Pizza: Making a secure storefront (pizza delivery) on Coda
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A pack with a formula that has a side effect (i.e. saves the data elsewhere but is not marked as Action so that it can run in Play Mode): me collecting emails on my landing page (see Coaching → The Courses)
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Demo now defunct but the principle remains: a hosted embed with a way to trigger a webhook: Itsy: A Free Pack for Writing Web Apps that Run in Coda - #11 by Paul_Danyliuk
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why do you need a formula-pack with side-effects?
i thought play-only mode lets users click buttons anyway.
so you could make an action-pack and place it in the button?
or did i miss the point?
is it a trick that is useful in a published form?
max
Play mode docs let you click the buttons to add, edit rows etc but only in your sandbox — like in my Viva Pizza example you could collect your local cart but it would be gone when you refresh the tab.
These buttons won’t let you run pack actions or send real notifications. But as long as it’s not an action, you could use pack formulas in your play mode docs.
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Can you also share this template. I really want to learn how to do it like this
Absolutely, here is the link.
It is uncomplete. And I use some terms inconsistently. Sometimes I use “items”, and “topics” interchangeably, as well as “collection” and “category”.
The best way to understand it (in my opinion) would be to have Items page opened on one side of your screen and the View of all Collections and their topics on another, you can then navigate trough topics/items (actually fruits and vegetables) and see how opened parent, parent number, hierarchy lvl, is in the current filter columns change for each row in the Items page/table.
Try making the home button work as an exercise. I have 100% intentionally not finished the doc so you can practice .
Home button is meant to show only topics that have hierarchy lvl 1. And hierarchy lvl 1 topics are the ones that don’t have any parent topic/category.
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